1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a configuration of an image capturing apparatus which is able to transmit an image, and a configuration of an image capturing system including such an image capturing apparatus.
2. Description of the Background Art
There has been an image capturing apparatus which captures an image and transmits the captured image to an operation terminal at remote site. The operation terminal is provided with a monitor which allows display of the captured image thus received. Further, in response to operations made with buttons by an operator, the operation terminal transmits to the image capturing apparatus, for example, commands regarding operations such as panning, tilting or zooming of the camera and a release command for instructing image recording.
With the use of a system comprising such an image capturing apparatus and an operation terminal, an operator can look images captured by the image capturing apparatus even at a site remote from the image capturing apparatus. Furthermore, by remote operation, the operator can record required images while controlling an angle of visibility in desired manners. In other words, it becomes possible to take an image of an object existing at a remote site in desired timing by utilizing the monitor of the operation terminal as a view finder.
In such an image capturing system, various kinds of communication forms between the image capturing apparatus and the operation terminal are available. Between the image capturing apparatus and the operation terminal, wireless communications such as bluetooth™, as well as wired communications via a telephone line, the Internet and the like are available. Also these communication forms can be used in combination.
However, when the image capturing apparatus and the operation terminal employs different communication forms, a difference occurs in the time when an image transmitted from the image capturing apparatus reaches the operation terminal.
In the case where the image capturing apparatus and the operation terminal communicate only by way of short-distance wireless communication, a transmission delay time will not be so long, however, in the case where the communication form between the image capturing apparatus and the operation terminal includes the Internet, a transmission delay time will be long.
In the case where the transmission delay time is long, the image that the operator is looking on the monitor of the operation terminal differs from the image that the image capturing apparatus is capturing now. For this reason, a desired captured image will not be obtained even if the operator paces the timing of image capturing while looking at the monitor and transmits a release command by remote control.
For solving these problems, several measures (transmission delay measures) have been taken heretofore, however, in the situation that the communication form with respect to the operation terminal is not fixed, there are no means for addressing the above problems.
Furthermore, in the case where the communication form between the image capturing apparatus and the operation terminal is the form where the charge depends on the amount of data transmission, since the communication cost differs depending on the frame rate of image transmission from the image capturing apparatus, a problem in cost arises in the system which transmits images at a constant frame rate regardless of communication form.